The Harvard Classics Volume 38 eBook

had not been touched. I asked M. le Marechal
to let me have some of the drugs which were in them,
which he did; and I was given the half only at one
time, and five or six days later I had to take the
rest; and yet it was not half enough to dress the
great number of wounded. And to correct and stop
the corruption, and kill the worms in their wounds,
I washed them with Aegyptiacum dissolved in wine and
eau-de-vie, and did all I could for them; but in spite
of all my care many of them died.

There were at La Fere some gentlemen charged to find
the dead body of M. de Bois-Dauphin the elder, who
had been killed in the battle; they asked me to go
with them to the camp, to pick him out, if we could,
among the dead; but it was not possible to recognize
him, the bodies being all far gone in corruption, and
their faces changed. We saw more than half a league
round us the earth all covered with the dead; and
hardly stopped there, because of the stench of the
dead men and their horses; and so many blue and green
flies rose from them, bred of the moisture of the
bodies and the heat of the sun, that when they were
up in the air they hid the sun. It was wonderful
to hear them buzzing; and where they settled, there
they infected the air, and brought the plague with
them. Mon petit maistre, I wish you had been there
with me, to experience the smells, and make report
thereof to them that were not there.

I was very weary of the place; I prayed M. le Marechal
to let me leave it, and feared I should be ill there;
for the wounded men stank past all bearing, and they
died nearly all, in spite of everything we did.
He got surgeons to finish the treatment of them, and
sent me away with his good favour. He wrote to
the King of the diligence I had shown toward the poor
wounded. Then I returned to Paris, where I found
many more gentlemen, who had been wounded and gone
thither after the battle.

THE JOURNEY TO THE CAMP AT AMIENS. 1558

The King sent me to Dourlan, under conduct of Captain
Gouast; with fifty men-at-arms, for fear I should
be taken by the enemy; and seeing we were always in
alarms on the way, I made my man let down, and made
him the master; for I got on his horse, which carried
my valise, and could go well if we had to make our
escape, and I took his cloak and hat and gave him my
mount, which was a good little mare; he being in front,
you would have taken him for the master and me for
the servant The garrison inside Dourlan, when they
saw us, thought we were the enemy, and fired their
cannon at us. Captain Gouast, my conductor, made
signs to them with his hat that we were not the enemy;
at last they ceased firing, and we entered Dourlan,
to our great relief.